Baby Names from Goddesses

Guest Author - Nancy Man

Many ancient goddesses had meaningful, feminine names that work quite well for modern baby girls. For instance, the Greek goddess of agriculture, Demeter, was sometimes known as Chloe -- a name that's become extremely popular in the U.S. within the last decade or so. And the people at Disney so liked Aurora, the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn, that they decided to use it for Princess Aurora, the lead character in Sleeping Beauty.

The best names seem to come from Roman and Greek mythology. There's Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and Mellona, the Roman goddess of bees. Thalia was the Greek Muse of comedy and pastoral poetry, while Clio was the Greek Muse of heroic poetry and history. Irene was the Greek personification of peace, and Iris was the Greek personification of the rainbow. (In fact, Iris later inspired the name of the popular garden flower.)

Greek and Roman myth can also help those people trying to find matching names for multiples or siblings: these two traditions are interrelated, so goddesses within one tend to correspond to goddesses within the other. The Roman goddess Vesta and the Greek goddess Hestia both ruled over hearth and family in their respective cultures. Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and crafts, probably evolved under the influence of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, crafts and war. Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt, replaced an earlier Roman moon goddess named Luna. Similarly, the Greek goddess Artemis (also called Cynthia) supplanted a former moon goddess named Selene.

There are many great names to be found within the other (non-Roman, non-Greek) mythological traditions as well. For example, Brigid was a popular pagan goddess of Ireland. There's also the Egyptian nature goddess Isis, the Norse fertility goddess Freya, the Inuit sun goddess Malina, the Hawaiian moon goddess Mahina, and the Hindu goddess of wisdom and wealth Lakshmi.